Been There, Tried That: Fad Diets Throughout the Years

Have you ever eaten grapefruits for long stretches of time in the hopes of dropping some pounds? Sipped on tea incessantly? Or maybe you added cookies to every meal? The things we'll do for a svelter shape! Check out some highly contested fad diets that have hooked people with their promises throughout the years.Wonder what people in other parts of the world eat to stay happy? Check out the secrets of the Mediterranean diet.

The "Cabbage" Diet

The "Cabbage" Diet

In the 1980s, dieters turned to cabbage to help them shed pounds. Those who followed this diet could eat as much cabbage soup as they wanted for a week (along with a few other low-calorie foods). The goal: drop 10 pounds. Experts believe that pounds lost were primarily water weight, not fat, which means that once dieters returned to their regular diets, most of them regained what they had lost.

The Cookie Diet

The Cookie Diet

We can see how it would be easy to get behind a diet with the word "cookie" in it. Unfortunately, it's not that easy, folks. In the mid-1970s, a physician named Sanford Siegal made a mixture of "certain amino acids" and baked them into a cookie, which he used to control hunger in his patients who wanted to lose weight. He instructed his patients to eat a number of cookies throughout the day to curb hunger. By the mid-1980s, The Cookie Diet had caught on, and various products, like shakes and other snack recipes, were sold around the country. In the mid-aughts, however, Dr. Siegal filed for bankruptcy.